Publications



Short Stories:
  • ‘The Difference Between Cowboys and Clowns’, published in Award-winning Tales, Becky Coffield, ed. 
  • ‘King of the Cocktails’ Never Hit by Lightning, Tucker Lieberman, ed.
  • ‘Bastard’, In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself, vol 8, MP Weaver, ed.
  • ‘The Road to Reparation’, Borderlines.
  • ‘Los Milagros’, London Magazine, Sebastian Barker, ed.
Essays and Literary Reviews:
  • Review of Agnieszka Dale’s Fox Season and Other Short Stories, in Los Angeles Review of Books, 29 Nov 2017.
  • Review of Charles E May’s ‘I Am Your Brother’ Short Story Studies and Morphologies, in Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, vol 4 no 1.

  • Review of Sherman Alexie’s Blasphemy, in Western American Literature, vol 48 no 4.
  • Review of Jim Goar’s Louisiana Purchase, in The Short Review.
  • Review of Diane Simmons’ Little America, in The Short Review.
  • Reveiw of Cheyenne Madonna by Eddie Chuculate, The Short Review.
  • Review of Trickle Down Timeline by Cris Mazza, The Short Review.
  • Review of Mattaponi Queen by Belle Boggs, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, spring issue.
  • Review of The Fifth Generation: A Nez Perce Tale by Linwood Laughy, Western American Literature, spring issue.
  • ‘Human Rights and Human Wrongs in a World Gone Mad’, London Magazine, April issue.
  • Review of War Dances by Sherman Alexie, Western American Literature, spring issue.
  • Review of Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie, The Short Review, January issue.
  • ‘Life In Third Person’, London Magazine, March issue.
  • ‘Conspiracy Theories on Cougar Creek’, in the anthology Return to a Better Tomorrow, R. Richards, ed.
Travel Writing

Awards and Recognition
  • 2010 ‘Gathering Fragments of Light’, Honourable Mention in the Carpe Articulum Novella Contest.
  • 2009 ‘The Difference Between Cowboys and Clowns’, Finalist in the Midnight Mesa short story competition.
  • 2009 ‘Kirsty Dreams of Evergreens’, Honourable Mention, NYC Midnight 24-hour Short Story Challenge.
  • 2009 ‘The Difference Between Cowboys and Clowns’, 1st-round Finalist in NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge.
  • 2009 ‘Watermelon Festival’, Fish Prize shortlist.
  • 2009 ‘Some Kind of Comfort’, Fish Prize shortlist.
  • 2009 ‘Revelation’, Fish Prize shortlist.
  • 2008 ‘Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction: A Review’, Finalist in Costa book review competition.
  • 2007 ‘Gathering Fragments of Light’, Semi-Finalist in Quarterly West Novella Competition.
  • 2006 ‘Road to Reparation’, Seattle Review Fiction Contest shortlist.
  • 2005 ‘Los Milagros’, VS Pritchett Memorial Prize shortlist.
  • 1998 ‘The Bear’, 2nd place Winchester Writers’ Conference.
Conference Papers:
  • 2010 'Indianness’ and Identity in the Novels and Short Stories of Sherman Alexie' at Framing the Self: Anxieties of Identity, University of Portsmouth.
  • 2010 ‘Voices of the American West: Striving for Authenticity’, Research in Progress conference, University of Chichester.
  • 2009 ‘The Paradox of Historical Fiction: Finding Truth Where None Exists’, Playful Paradox: Creative Writing on Campus, University of Bedfordshire.
Review Extracts & Endorsements:

Of ‘Los Milagros’: ‘ A most sophisticated, witty, surreal and irreverent story of how the stern vagaries of sexual piety may be overcome with the aid of a very special bird... I loved it – and so, I believe, would many of you.’ – Michael Holroyd











Popular posts from this blog

Gathering historical research on William Clark's Nez Perce son

Image
During the past year, I have been attempting to gather all available information about William Clark’s supposed Nez Perce son, variously known as Tzi-Kal-Tza, Halahtookit, Al-pa-to-kate, Daytime Smoke(r), and Son of Daytime Smoker. The name I find the most poignant, however, the name that links into my research on personal identity, is the one he is said to have called himself – Clark (Moulton, vol 7, p 241). * The idea for my project started to emerge about ten years ago, when I visited the Nez Perce Historical Museum in my hometown of Lewiston, Idaho. Among the exhibits were collections of artifacts from early white settlers, the Nez Perce tribe, and the Lewis and Clark expedition which passed through the region twice: in September 1805, on their way to the west coast; and in May 1806, on their return journey to St. Louis. As I grew up in Lewiston, I thought I knew the history of the area fairly well, but tucked into a display of beaded gauntlets and stone tools was a piece of i
Continue Reading...

A Discussion of Sherman Alexie's novel, Indian Killer

Image
          A year after the acclaimed Reservation Blues , Sherman Alexie’s second novel, Indian Killer received reticent praise when it was published in 1996. It is a book which he, himself, seems both drawn to and repelled by. In a 2002 interview with Duncan Campbell, Alexie states ‘It’s the only one [of my books] I re-read. I think a book that disturbs me that much is the one I probably care the most about’ 1 . He has expressed dissatisfaction with it, artistically, describing it as a failed mystery novel and ‘pretentious’ for its literary ambitions 2 . Maya Jaggi writes that he has now distanced himself from the novel and feels ‘overwhelming disgust’ [Alexie’s words] towards the violence portrayed 3 . Apparent in Reservation Blues , his previous collection of short stories The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven , and his poetry, Alexie’s own rage rises to its peak in this novel, with an outpouring of fictional vengeance for historical crimes.  
Continue Reading...

The Significance of Landscape in Literature of the American West

Image
The Broad Expanse: charting the landscape Western literature is tied to place more than any other regional form.  As we read the pages of a Cormac McCarthy novel or an Annie Proulx short story, we traverse a world of staggering imagery: jagged peaks of distant blue mountains, arid expanses of red desert and sagebrush, and hip-high seas of winter wheat rippling and cresting in a prairie breeze.  It is a world of wide-open spaces and unpopulated places, where characters come and go, but the land is constant and forever.  In her essay ‘Dangerous Ground’, Annie Proulx argues that landscape is much more than what the landscape historian John Brinckerhoff Jackson describes as being ‘a portion of the earth’s surface that can be comprehended at a single glance’ (2008, p. 12).  Rather, she offers her own broader definition: Landscape is geography, archaeology, astrophysics, agronomy, agriculture, the violent character of the atmosphere, climate, black squirrels and wild oats, folded rock, bu
Continue Reading...